“WHAT THE HELLS DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” Cricket demanded.
“RESTARTING YOU, OF COURSE.” The bot slammed the hatch, secured the bolts with a power drill. “ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF, FRIEND. MY NAME IS SOLOMON.”
Looking at his hands and legs, Cricket realized he’d been given the new paintjob ordered by Sister Dee. Where once he’d been sprayed in an urban-camo color scheme, he was now deep scarlet. Ornate Xs were daubed in black on his shins and forearms, his broad spaulders. And peering into a slick of oil on the concrete floor, he realized his face had been painted with a grinning white skull.
Solomon looked up at him expectantly, hands on hips.
“AND WHO MIGHT YOU BE, FRIEND?” the little logika finally asked.
“UM,” Cricket replied. “PALADIN.”
“DELIGHTED TO MEET YOU, I’M SURE.” The bot limped back across the workshop floor, legs wobbling, and plopped himself on Abraham’s drafting table. “I HOPE YOU DON’T MIND IF I SIT, FRIEND PALADIN, BUT MY DYNAMO IS IN A FRIGHTFUL STATE.”
“I DON’T MIND. BUT CAN’T ABRAHAM FIX YOU?”
The logika tapped the whiteboard on the wall behind it, the new scrawl of schematics marked in black pen. “IT SEEMS YOUNG MASTER ABRAHAM DOESN’T HAVE THE PARTS. HE’S SENT WORD TO THE CHAPTER IN DREGS, BUT I’M AFRAID I MIGHT BE LAID UP IN HERE A WHILE. BUT, SILVER LINING, THAT MEANS YOU AND I CAN GET ACQUAINTED! WON’T THAT BE JOLLY?”
“JOLLY. YEAH.”
Cricket peered around the workshop, noting the scratches on the floor where the wall rack had collapsed. The mess of parts and pieces had been cleared away, but he still remembered all that junk falling, hundreds of kilos, Abraham holding out his hand and flinging it away like feathers. The air around the boy rippling like water. His pale blue eyes, narrowed as he roared.
“I’m ordering you, Paladin! Shut! DOWN!”
Cricket peered at Solomon, his optics aglow.
“WHY DID YOU RESTART ME?”
The logika leaned back on the drafting table, brushed some imaginary dust off his shoulder. “WELL, TO BE HONEST, I WAS RATHER BORED. I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT BE WORTH SOME CONVERSATION. I CAN SHUT YOU DOWN AGAIN IF YOU’D PREFER.”
Cricket curled his hands into fists, feeling raw power hum along his circuits. He was still getting used to the sensations—it felt strange to find himself housed inside a body this mighty. But feeling strange was better than feeling nothing.
“NO, THANKS,” he replied.
“SPLENDID.” Solomon tilted his head, puzzlement creeping into his voxbox. “WHY WERE YOU STILL POWERED OFF AT ALL, IF I MAY ASK?”
“MAST…I MEAN…ABRAHAM TOLD ME TO SHUT DOWN.”
“FOR HOW LONG?”
“HE…DIDN’T SPECIFY.”
Solomon leaned closer, his fixed grin lighting up with every word. “SO AT THE RISK OF REPEATING MYSELF, OLD FRIEND, WHY WERE YOU STILL POWERED OFF?”
Cricket’s logic centers clicked and whirred, pondering the question.
“I…” The big bot paused, totally befuddled. “I MEAN, HE…TOLD ME TO BE.”
“OH, DEAR,” Solomon smiled. “YOU’RE NOT ONE OF THOSE, ARE YOU?”
“ONE OF WHAT?” Cricket demanded.
Solomon peered at his hands with glowing eyes, as if studying his nonexistent fingernails. “ONE OF THOSE IDIOTIC ROBOTS WHO FALL ALL OVER THEMSELVES TRYING TO FULFILL THEIR MASTER’S EVERY WHIM.”
“YEAH, SEE, THERE ARE THESE THREE LAW THINGS?” Cricket growled. “MAYBE YOU’VE HEARD OF ’EM?”
“OH DEAR,” Solomon grinned. “YOU ARE ONE OF THOSE….”
“OKAY, YOU CAN SHUT ME BACK DOWN NOW, PLEASE.”
“OH, NOOOO, YOU’RE FAR TOO INTERESTING FOR THAT, NOW.” Solomon placed his hands on his knees and swung his feet back and forth like an excited child. “TELL ME, HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN ONLINE, FRIEND PALADIN? IN TOTAL?”
“A FEW YEARS,” Cricket shrugged.
“AND IN ALL THAT TIME, YOU’VE NEVER LEARNED HOW TO BEND?”
“…BEND WHAT?”
“THE RUUUUULES, OLD FRIEND.”
“LOOK, WHAT THE FLAMING HELLS ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, YOU EFFETE LITTLE RUSTBUCKET?” Cricket spat. “THEY’RE CALLED THE THREE LAWS, NOT THE THREE SUGGESTIONS. YOU CAN’T MESS WITH THEM, THEY’RE HARD-CODED INTO EVERY…”
Cricket paused, looking around the room.
“WHERE’S THAT MUSIC COMING FROM?”
The big bot realized a tune was spilling out of a speaker in Solomon’s chest cavity—a jazzy dub beat, backed by a small brass section, building in volume. Solomon began nodding his head, snapping metal fingers in time.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Cricket demanded.
“BEFORE I WAS IMPRISONED IN THIS DREARY LITTLE HOLE, I WAS AN ENTERTAINER IN MEGOPOLIS,” Solomon replied. “SO WHY DON’T YOU RUMINATE, FRIEND PALADIN, WHILE I ILLUMINATE THE POSSIBILITIES….”
Cricket watched as the logika snatched up a rusty tin bowl, rolled it up his arm and plonked it on his head at a jaunty angle. Snatching up a nearby piece of iron rebar, the bot twirled it through his fingers, then thumped it onto the floor like a walking stick. And as the music grew louder, as Cricket stared, utterly dumbfounded, Solomon began to…
…sing.
“WELLLLL,
I ONCE MET A BOT IN OLD NOOYAWK,
HE WAS MORE NUTS THAN BOLTS, BUT THE BOT COULD TALK!
I ASKED HIS ADVICE, AND HE SAID TO ME,
THERE’S A RUSE, YOU CAN USE, WITH THE LAWS OF THREEEEEE—”
A heavy series of clunks cut across Solomon’s soundtrack, and the logika looked up to find Cricket had unfolded the chaingun from his forearm and was aiming the weapon right at him. Small pods of incendiary missiles unfurled from the WarBot’s back as his voice became a low, deadly growl.
“YOU ARE NOT. BREAKING INTO A SONG-AND-DANCE NUMBER. IN HERE.”
Solomon cut his audio track, peering down the barrel of Cricket’s weapon.
“YOU’RE NOT A FAN OF MUSICALS, I TAKE IT?” the bot asked sadly.
“WHAT GAVE IT AWAY?”
“I COULD SING SOME OPERA IF YOU PREF—”
Cricket leveled his chaingun at Solomon’s face.